Notes App

watchOS 26 finally sees the arrival of the Notes app on Apple Watch. Its productivity sibling, Reminders, has been available on the platform since 2016 with watchOS 3, so it’s astounding that it’s taken almost 10 years for Notes to make the leap. It also makes it all the more frustrating to see how much Apple has kneecapped the app on watchOS.

All you can do in the Notes app is on these four screens.

This will by far be the shortest chapter in this review, as the “features” of the Notes app can be laid out very quickly. First, you can view a list of all your notes, synced via iCloud with your other devices, with pinned notes at the top. Second, you can open a note, but you cannot edit or interact with it in any way except to check off items in a checklist that you will need to create on another device. Third, you can delete any note.

The only additional feature is the ability to create a new note from scratch; however, this is also severely restricted. There are two ways to add text (you cannot add links, pictures, or lists on the Apple Watch): typing and dictation. I don’t anticipate many people using the former due to its slow speed. Dictation seems more promising, but it’s hampered by the watchOS dictation limit – two minutes for on-device languages, one minute for languages not on-device. Two minutes might seem like a long time, but in testing, I found that time passed very quickly, and it restricted what I could say.

All of this coalesces into the Notes app being useful for two things:

1. Viewing your notes.
2. Dictating a short note.

You cannot style text or add headings, so once you’ve created a new note, it takes the form of a single block of text, locked until you open it on another device. Did you get a word wrong, did you forget to mention something, or did your Apple Watch misunderstand you? Too bad; you have to redo it all in a new note.

I understand how the Apple Watch’s small interface might limit one’s ability to edit a note, but the idea that it isn’t even practical to let someone append text to the end of an existing note seems quite silly. I guess we should be grateful that we can now view notes on our Apple Watches, but boy, could we have gotten a better experience?

Additional Tidbits

The Messages app has taken on most of the changes in its counterparts on Apple’s other platforms. This includes message backgrounds, polls, Live Translation, and smart actions. Smart actions are prompts based on the context of the message you receive. For instance, if your friend asks where you are, Messages will surface a button to share your location. It’s great to see Messages on watchOS keeping lock step with the other OSes.

Likewise, the Phone app has done the same, gaining new features like Call Screening and Hold Assist that have been released this year for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Apple has thankfully rectified a big flaw in watch face refresh rates. Last year, when the Series 10 screen brought a 1Hz refresh rate to the Apple Watch for the first time, it was an exciting possibility to have the Always-On screen update every second, displaying the seconds on certain watch faces. Unfortunately, only the new faces that debuted alongside the Series 10 supported that capability.

Now, thankfully, that restriction is no more: all watch faces that need to update every second can do so whether the screen is active or the Always-On mode is enabled. This feature, of course, only works on the Series 10, Series 11, and Ultra 3 models.

A small change in buttons (left and center) and a new look for the watch face gallery (right).

The only other place where a shift in watchOS’ UI design is apparent is when swiping on list items. You can see this in the Timers app when you have multiple timers. Where most people will notice it, though, is in the Smart Stack. When you swipe to clear a suggested widget, the buttons are no longer squares with corner radii that match the widget; they are now circles. I like this change because, while the radius of the Apple Watch’s corners has increased, giving it a more curved look, these kinds of buttons have remained quite square, reminiscent of older models.

The Face Gallery has undergone a redesign, too, though it’s more of a reorganization than a new look. Each watch face is now placed under a big tab for a specific genre like ‘Health & Fitness’ or ‘Data Rich’. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but to some extent, it does help you find the watch face you want.

In some bad news for Pixar fans, the Toy Story watch face is no more. The reason for this removal has not been announced, and while I don’t use this face, I’m disappointed to see it go. After all, if we can have fun with Snoopy on our watch faces, why can’t we see Buzz, Woody, and Co. when we check the time?

Finally, as I covered earlier in the year, watchOS gains Live Listen controls and other accessibility features such as Live Captions. With the latter feature, you can place your iPhone near someone who is speaking and see the readout of what they are saying directly on your Apple Watch, which is very cool.